Welcome back.
In this video we'll look at how to approach painting the character's skintone.
By using texture throughout to both blend and build our highlights we'll be able to create
an effective and intriguing result.
We're going to have two general light sources.
One on the front here, and one on the back.
That way when we turn the model around it'll look interesting from both sides.
We'll use the same colours that we did on the face. So if you haven't seen that video,
we started off by taking some GW Tallarn Flesh, but you can use any similar flesh colour.
Then we add some Kimera Majenta both to darken it and also warm it up,
again you don't to use this paint, any magenta or dark pink will be fine.
This gives us our midtone.
To make it a shadow colour we'll take some of it and add in a small amount of Kimera Pthalo Blue.
We used this as our base colour.
For the initial highlight layer, we'll use our fleshy pink midtone.
I'll start on the back of the legs. Now they are wider at the top and taper down toward the knees
so what we'll do is mirror that in our highlight by making it wider at the top.
Stopping just before the back of the knee as there's a little recess
there so you would expect a shadow.
We'll do the same on the other side,
again making the highlight wider at the top to reflect the shape of the leg.
And we'll add a highlight onto the exposed part of the butt and again on the back of the knees.
I've mentioned this before but you always want to try and match the
shape of your highlight to the shape of the surface that you're working on.
That way you'll get a more convincing result and it's going to help you decide how to form your
highlights so you're not just flailing around painting random shapes hoping for the best.
Turn the model round and repeat that on the other side.
Painting your highlight along the length of the thigh, allowing it to taper down towards the knee.
Then adding a little highlight on the knee itself.
When you have those in place, apply a second coat to make sure the colour is solid.
To continue we'll thin that pinky colour down slightly with a bit of water.
Than using that we'll begin to blend out the highlights with some stippling,
just gently tapping the tip of the brush on and around the edge of the highlights
to create a textured fading effect.
If you're new to stippling, it's a fairly simple concept but it affords you a lot of flexibility.
The basic idea is that you gently and repeatedly tap the tip of the brush against the surface,
moving the brush around the general area, each tap leaving behind a small dot of paint.
And by using a consistency that has a certain level of transparency to it,
you are able to control the opacity or coverage.
Adding more dots in the same area will reduce the transparency of the paint.
Thus you can decide where to make your colour more or less intense
simply by how many dots you apply in any given position.
This is going to allow you to create a blend by making your dots
become more sparse and spread out as you move away from your highlight.
When you're doing this don't apply the dots blindly without thought,
but at the same time don't put too much thought into each individual dot.
Instead, focus your attention on the surface that you're working on. And let it guide you.
Just like a sculptor doesn't focus their attention on every single hammer blow,
they look at the surface of the rock to guide where to place the chisel.
Try to do the same thing with your brush as you're painting.
Look at the surface, not the brush.
Most of your dots should be placed on the hard line
between the two colours, they should be fairly tightly clustered,
then as you get further away from the line allow more space to appear between them.
You can see that initially harsh line is beginning to fade out.
It's really just a case of working your way over the model,
blending out each highlight until you're happy with the result.
I'll do the same thing on the underside pulling the dots down
and around towards the inner part of the thigh.
You can also use glazing to help soften this out further, but in keeping with our original ethos of
not worrying too much about making things perfect, I'm just going to use stippling throughout
so that I don't get caught up in a cycle of chasing perfection.
Having said that I do start to make a mistake here.
And it's a pretty big one.
As I was painting I wasn't really paying any attention to the palette
and simply reaching over and taking paint when I needed it.
Now normally, that wouldn't be an issue but unfortunately
the paint had been sitting for a while and the highlight started to
separate into it's original colours with the magenta gradually rising to the top of the mix.
So I ended up with an overly pink ring around the edge of my highlight.
Once I realized that was happening, and had stopped swearing I just stirred
the paint around a bit to remix it and continued stippling over the pink area to
bring the colour back to where I wanted it.
It's not a major disaster as you usually have quite a lot of colour variation on skin
so we don't actually need to totally knock this back,
we can treat it as more of a happy accident and just let it form some of that variability for us.
If you're using this method, usually the first highlight takes the longest to blend out,
because the edges are going to be a lot bigger than any subsequent layers that you apply.
So don't worry too much if you feel it's taking you a while to blur out the edges,
it gets progressively faster as you work your way through the layers.
If I was going to be painting this to a higher level I would be going back and
forth between glazing and stippling in order to keep the texture subtle and the blend smooth.
I might even employ 'back glazing', using the darker colour to further smooth things out
by glazing it over the transition pulling it in the other direction towards our base colour.
That's the approach I took for the skin on the witch model I painted recently. However
that can be quite laborious and I'm trying to paint this up fairly quickly
so I'm not bothering to do any extra refining steps here.
You might want to check those videos out to see how you can
go about tackling a more high level approach.
Even with stippling on it's own you can still get a pretty decent final result.
Just applying small dots on and around the edge of the highlight,
the goal being to blur out the obvious line between the two colours.
It's quite relaxing to do actually, I usually zone out to some music
or a podcast and just tap away until I like what I see.
A few things to watch out for when you're doing this though.
If your dots and drying as little rings,
don't persevere thinking you'll be able to fix it with more dots.
You're either going to be using too thin of a consistency
or you have too much paint on the brush.
Usually a combination of both.
To fix it, either make your paint slightly thicker
or take more paint off the brush by holding it against a paper towel for a few seconds.
I can recommend starting off in an area where any mistakes aren't going to show up,
then you apply a few test dots just to see how they're going to look.
The other issue you might run into is that your dots go on opaque.
What you're looking for is to have your dots fade out slightly as they dry,
that way you'll have much better control over the gradient.
An easy fix is to add a bit more water to the paint.
A good habit to get into is always testing the paint on your thumbnail,
in order to check the transparency before you apply it to the model.
It'll react on your nail the same way as on the model
so you're able to judge if the paint is going to behave how you want it to.
And that's pretty solid advice irregardless of what technique that you're using.
I'm fairly happy with how that's looking so we'll move on to applying a new layer.
We'll create this the same way we did on the face, first taking some White Sands and
mixing in a small amount of the Caribbean Blue to give us a really light turquoise.
Then we'll use that, mixing it into our fleshy pink mid tone, making it lighter.
Now you have that, place your colour in the same spots,
but this time making the highlights about half the size as your previous layer.
Alright so, I'll start on the knees, just picking out the top,
if you think about the light coming down from above, you would expect the knees to
catch some of it as they stick out slightly proud of the leg.
We'll also paint in a highlight along the length of the leg,
again trying to make these a little wider at the top, becoming thinner as we move down the thigh.
Don't worry about making the colour solid in a single pass,
it's good to apply this over a couple of layers so you get a clean finish.
Alright, now that we have those highlights in place
we'll start to use our stippling to blend them out.
Gently tapping the tip of the brush against the surface,
leaving behind little semi transparent dots.
Focusing most of our dots on the obvious hard line at the edge of the highlight,
then reducing the number of dots, allowing them to become more sporadic
and spread out the further we move away from that hard line.
That way we can build up a gradient.
Remember this doesn't have to be perfect, when you're painting a section at a time,
I find you tend to get a false idea of how it's actually going to look on the finished model.
By viewing it isolation you're going to be
more focused on the imperfections as you have nothing to compare it to.
But once you start filling in the rest of the model you're going to have a lot more to look at,
which usually makes your eyes become a lot more forgiving.
Unless you're painting for a competition or as a personal challenge
there's really no point pushing yourself to breaking point.
So try to find a happy medium between getting a result you're happy with
while still enjoying what you're doing.
For example that highlight there is starting to look OK,
it wouldn't pass for competition standard as it's still a little rough.
But, remember we're viewing this ultra close up.
But in real life you're not going to be looking at it zoomed in with a magnifier,
it's going to be more like this.
So your eyes aren't going to pick up on it.
It'll do the butt cheeks as well. Just obscuring the hard edge of the highlights.
And it's the same process for the front of the legs.
Using stippling to apply lots of little dots on and around the edge of the highlight,
to blur out or obscure that harsh line.
You can make this as refined as you want just by spending more time on it.
It's really up to you how much work you want to put into it.
Once you're happy with how it's looking, grab your next highlight colour,
which we'll make by adding a bit more of that light turquoise into the mix making it lighter.
Again painting this on without trying to blend it out,
targeting in the same spots, but making them half the size as your previous layer.
And I'l start on the back of the legs. Now they are wider at the top and taper down towards the
knees. So what we'll do is mirror that in our highlight by making it wider at the top.
We'll do the same on the other side again making the highlight wider at the top
to reflect the shape of the leg.
Alright so now that we have those highlights in place we'll
start to use our stippling to blend them out.
Gently taping the tip of the brush against the surface
leaving behind little semi transparent dots.
Focusing most of our dots on that obvious hard line at the edge of the highlight.
Adding more dots in the same area will reduce the transparency of the paint.
Thus you can decide to make your colours more or less intense
simply by how many dots you apply. This is going to let you create a blend by making your dots
become more sparese and spread out as you move away from the highlight.
it's really just a case of working your way across
the model blending out each highlight until you're happy with the result.
You should be able to see what I meant now by each subsequent layer taking a lot less time to finish.
This last highlight takes hardly any time at all to blend out.
Just because you have a lot less surface area around the edge to obscure.
To finish this off, we'll take some of the magenta and thin it
down to a glaze consistency with a little water.
Then with hardly any of that on the brush we'll
glaze over the knees to give them a subtle colour change.
Knees and elbows are usually more red than the rest of your skin
so it's good to add a little colour in those areas to give them a more realistic feel.
Apply this over a few layers until you're happy with the effect.
Just make sure to let each layer dry before applying another one.
How pink you want to make them is up to you.
I prefer a more subtle effect so I'm happy to stop there, I think that's looking OK now.
Alright troops so I hope that gives you some more tools for when you're tackling your skintones.
Thanks a lot for your support and I'll see you all in the next video.